Colds and cold remedies
This past four weeks you may have noticed a dearth of my science blogs gracing the web site. Between the holidays and being afflicted with two nasty cold bugs, my writing production has fallen to zero. The latter of the two colds was by far the worst and kept my energy levels so low that the last thing I wanted to do was write. Obviously I have recovered enough so that I can now again resume wordsmithing about my perspectives on the common cold.
I have to say that when I am sick, I feel that my life is being sucked out of me and nothing except time, sleep and whining seem to make any difference at all to the business of getting better. It is at these times that inwardly, I rail against the lack of progress that science has made in abating the effects of these nasty viruses. In fact it now appears that most of the over the counter remedies that are touted in TV ads as providing miraculous relief are right up there with snake oil and are probably detrimental to your health rather than providing a balm against the sniffles. It has definitely been established that no child should be given cold remedies and cough syrups, because not only are they useless, but they can even be deadly. There have been a number of child deaths associated with these over the counter remedies.
But not being a child, at least not physically, this does not apply to me. So I have tried all the over the counter remedies and have found, strictly anecdotally, that nothing seems to provide relief. And there have been occasions when it seems to have prolonged the effects of the cold!
I have also tried the herbal, hand me down, remedies. Echinacha, vitamin C, garlic, zinc, saunas, stiff drinks and other so called quick remedies just don’t work either! They don’t prevent, ameliorate or lessen the impacts of the common cold in the least, though perhaps a stiff drink will dull your senses and sensibilities enough to make you think you feel better. And if you have enough of them, the effects of the hangover might supersede the cold symptoms, and make you forget about being sick because you’re too hung over. But generally these so-called cures are just anecdotal and never live up to their hype and even worse, just don’t work.
The upshot is that we just have to suffer through the winter months and suffer through the inevitable colds.
The truth is that science can inoculate you against a specific cold, but from what I have read, there are hundreds of cold viruses out there. And that would mean becoming a human pin cushion! Because getting one doesn’t protect you from getting another, though as soon as you get one you will never get it again. But with hundreds of others waiting in the wings to afflict you it would be quite a chore to be inoculated against them all.
It sure would be nice if science could invent, discover or conjure a cure for all the colds out there with a simple pill…Until then sniff…cough…..hack…whine….